The gardens of Medina Azahara & their reconstruction by means of pollen

A few kilometers out of the city of Córdoba, in Andalusia, someone built a garden-city, one day.

Lineal or square, sunbathed, white: 

its name -given by the feudal Christian gentlemen- was Medina Azahara.

In fact, the city was so white, that the chromatic contrast with the boscages of its environment used to hurt the eye.

The Moorish leader who built it -whose name we won't remember-, he gave orders to his servants to incinerate the forests, to burn those boscages that surrounded the white city

because the whole panorama, seen from the hills of the Sierra Morena, it used to hurt the eye

brutal contrast of light, like a white marisma sunken into an intensely green-ish dream.

A dream, de hecho: the city was a dream.

And why did he build the city of Madinat Al-Zahra?

Elegant and white, the whole dome was created in order to divert the concubine of this Moorish leader

to entertain her eyes.

Her name was Vinsesgunta, or Vinsesgunth, she was a slave that the Moorish captured from the Visigoth.

Her hairs were golden like a Caliph's palace mirrors, and she was 13

her eyes were like the clouds that violently gather themselves over the river Guadalquivir with great tempest

for example in July.

The hate of the Christian kingdoms of the north for the Moor, it was considerable

the Moorish were few, but they dominated the south, Andalusia, and all over those comarques, they used to build dreams.

Strange dreams, or cities, that the feudal Christian cavalleros didn't understand: that oriental opulence.

White cities, lit scandalously under a Mediterranean sun, clamorously illuminated under that same sun that the Romans saw: the sun of the smiling Hispania Ulterior, the Bética, place of birth of Seneca, the tenebrous, who wrote "De Brevitate vitæ" among those sordid boscages.

The white city of Medina Azahara was a medieval eastern dream in the middle of Occident, the "city of the flower"

its construction started in the X century AD

its destruction ended in the XI century AD.

What a sad fate for Medina Azahara , inaugurated in 976, and finally assaulted, looted and sacked to the destruction in 1010, by the hate of the Christian count Ramonn Borrell of Barcelona, who assaulted the white city assisted by French cavaliers and Catalan noblemen.

The mosque was burned, the ashes were ploughed and solemnly cursed 

the pheasants of the gardens were roasted, good banquet for the Christian cavaliers, same as the other exotic animals, that were adorn of the city, like the horse-men of Sagittarius, chased in the obscure jungles of Hindoo China and Borneu, or the speaking monkeys from the isle of Brasil, which was in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by burning water, according to the Venetian cartographer Andrea Pirlo.

All the Moorish of Córdoba were captured. Their feet were incinerated and their genitals cut.

A giant cross of silver was settled in the place of the mosque, symbol of the triumph of the Christian Europe over the Moor.

Since that day, the Moor was pushed toward the farthest south, refuged in a few walled cities, and finally enslaved and expulsed: their faces were spitted.

This is how the Christian feudalism triumphed in the Iberian Peninsula.

Notwithstanding, Vinsesgunth survived, and though she was already mature, she returned to the ruins of Medina Azahara, during the autumn of the year 1013.

A luminous morning of October, she returned to the ruins and ashes of Madinat Al-Zahra, riding a little donkey tranquilly:

once in the devastated gardens, she released pollen from a perfumed leather bag.

Portentously, nonexistent walls rised from the ashes, white like the snow

from the burned holm oaks, yellow birds in flight emanated, iridescent like the birds of the Italian forests

the echo of their chirps created a fountain at the feet of Vinsesgunth, and other prodigious things, which that mörning happened.

The pheasant didn't retun, though

neither the horse-men of Sagittarius

the eyes of Vinsesgunth were immense, amazed, like a child

it was autumn, but her garden was in spring, full of light and light

shepherds passed by, and stayed looking at her, who danced in circles under the universal quadrangle, in ecstasy

as it seems, only she could see all that prodigy, for the shepherds it was still the same desolate place, with the ashes flying in the autumn wind and the horrid calcinated trees, with ravens on the branches

they looked at Vinsesgunth dancing, from the distance, as if they were observing a raving lunatic.

They looked at Vinsesgunth dancing.

Dancing, dancing, dancing.

Dancing.

Dancing.